Saturday, March 29, 2014

Daniel Hilliard has been divorced from his wife, Miranda, for a couple years. He's an actor, so he's frequently unemployed. He just got a job doing nude modeling for an art class, but that's been his only regular job for some time. His wife, meanwhile, runs a business, and is always at work. He only gets to see his children every other weekend, and every Tuesday for tea.

But lately, Miranda has been passive aggressively shaving time off his visits. Showing up early to pick up the kids from their father's apartment. Showing up late dropping them off, robbing Daniel of precious time with his children.

So Daniel does something drastic: he responds to the ad his ex-wife takes out in the paper for a housekeeper. Disguising himself as a woman named Madame Doubtfire, he applies for the job, and Miranda is so impressed she hires him on the spot.

Before he's even hired, he tells his three children who he is, and now he gets all the time with his children he wants.

I thought this would be so much more interesting than it is. I was surprised the story takes place in England. After that wore off, I was surprised again when I found out it's actually a young adult book. And then when that shock wore off, I was surprised at Daniel's lack of motivation to take such drastic means to see his children.

Daniel doesn't lose custody of his children. He still sees them often enough, so why does he feel the need to disguise himself as a woman and take the job as his ex's housekeeper? All because Miranda is shaving a few minutes off his teatime and weekend visits? He needs child support money? That's not a big enough of a problem to merit such an extreme solution.

Furthermore, once he is Madame Doubtfire, working in his ex-wife's home, it's not really that big a deal. It makes sense he would let his children in on the act so they really could spend time with their father, but nothing of consequence happens because of this.

There are a couple seeds of ideas for how his disguise as Madame Doubtfire could have become a crucial plot development. Only once do we hear Miranda talk about Daniel and the horrible things she had to endure since the day they were married, and this could have been interesting. Daniel could have used Madame Doubtfire to figure out why their marriage fell apart, gaining a new perspective on things and finding a way to turn things around. That would have been a perfect way to use this disguise!

But this idea is unused. In fact, it succeeds in making Daniel look like a real jerk. For example: on his and Miranda's wedding day, there was a girl out in front of a grocery store giving away kittens, and she only had one left. So what does Daniel do? He cuts away from his wedding, fetches the litter his own cat just had, dumps the whole box on the girl and flees. He just gives her another litter of kittens to try to give away. In the rain. That's not funny. That makes him a real asshole.

Daniel is not a very likable person. Neither is Miranda. One has to feel for the children, caught in the middle of this, and that's what the book is about. Digging up these buried fights and bringing them to the surface. Nobody had the courage to outright say these things before, but somehow discovering her husband is Madame Doubtfire gives everyone the courage to speak these things aloud. Once the anger and resentment is out in the open, peace is possible.

But again, the whole Madame Doubtfire thing is barely necessary. Daniel says he never would have been driven to such an act if not for Miranda robbing him of his time with the kids, but it's totally uncalled for. He still sees his kids. There were a thousand better ways to deal with it. The whole business of disguising himself as Madame Doubtfire is underplayed for the absurdity of it all. The whole idea is so drastic, and it serves such a small role in overcoming a problem that is so simple.

He could have used Madame Doubtfire to understand why the marriage failed, but he doesn't, and hearing what his ex really thinks of him has no impact on him. One would think gaining a new perspective on himself would stimulate him to try to curb these behaviors, but he does not.

So much more could have been done with this idea. It needed a bigger reason to justify it, and it needed to draw more attention to the consequences.

Instead of opening a couple years after the divorce, we now see the divorce as it happens. Daniel has a much better reason to disguise himself as Mrs. Doubtfire: his wife convinces the judge that he is an unfit parent, and can't see his children.

He loves his children so much he can't stand to be apart from them, so he gets his makeup artist friend to make him a disguise so he can take the job as his ex's housekeeper. He gets the job, and now he has to deal with close-calls, the hazards of being a woman, and staying in character for weeks at at time, plus holding down a day job as janitor at a studio.

Daniel is now a voice actor, but he isn't as mean with his humor, which makes him much more likable, but he makes a questionable decision in the movie that he does not make in the book: he does not tell his children that he's Mrs. Doubtfire. They have no idea until close to the end that she's him, and this makes no sense. If his goal is to spend time with his children, why shouldn't he let them in on the ruse? If his kids don't know it's him, how is that spending time with them? The book makes more sense in this regard because they're in on it from the beginning, and they really do get to be with their father.

In both the book and the movie, the ruse falls apart when Daniel tries to be two people in the same place at the same time. The movie's reveal is much more interesting than the book because it happens in a public place. The consequences are bigger, and that's as it should be. Something this drastic deserves to have a huge impact. In the book, it barely changes anything.

The book ends with Mrs. Doubtfire's clothes in the trash, gone forever. The movie ends with Mrs. Doubtfire being used as a character of a new children's show. That'd kinda cool until you think about it. It would be like if Mr. Rogers turned out to be a woman dressed as a man. Would that sit right with any parent once word gets out? Would a studio take that risk? I doubt it, but it's a cute idea.

The movie ends with the possibility of the family getting back together. It's a nice ending note, but as someone who has seen that tried, I know it rarely works when two people get back together after a split. You think things have changed, but they never have. I actually prefer the book's ending. There's no hope of Daniel and Miranda getting back together, but there is hope things will be more amiable.

Overall I think the movie is better than the book. It takes the idea and gives it a bigger reason, with bigger consequences. It's the focus of the story now. But even the movie makes a few changes that hurt its case. Robin Williams' performance sells the whole concept, and it's worth seeing for that alone.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

I'm tired of thinking I should be doing something productive. Always should be doing something else--no matter what I do, it's never the thing I should be doing right now.

I always get like this right before I'm ready to write again. Can't give attention to anything. Even when reading I feel like I should be doing something else. Reading, playing games, watching TV or what have you, I always get the feeling that I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing, so I tend to bounce from one thing to another, unable to commit to any one thing for very long. Everything I do, except writing a novel. Writing novels is the only time I don't feel like I'm wasting my time and I need to be doing something else.

Just have to wait it out. My head will clear up eventually and then I'll be ready to do things again. It hasn't always been this way. Just the last few years I get like this. I binge for months on a project, then take a few months off and start again. But in the last few years, I started to grapple with this new feeling. I miss the days before I started feeling like this. More than ever, I want these cycles to end.

If there's a name for this feeling, someone please tell me. I look forward to the other side, when it passes and I'm ready to focus on things again.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

For some reason this movie popped in my head a few weeks ago out of the blue. I only caught the last fifteen minutes of it as a kid, and back in the early 90's, this was cool:

The computer animation mesmerized me. Nowadays it looks cheesy, but I remember when CGI like that was the cutting edge. It was new--nothing looked like that!

So what's it about? The plot is basically the same as any other science-gone-awry story: man invents something for the good of mankind (virtual reality), military wants to turn it into weapon of war, something goes wrong, project is suspended, scientist goes rogue and experiments on a human (Jobe Smith), the human turns into a monster and plans to take over the world.

In this case, experiments with virtual reality lead to a man having telekinetic power over the real world. Or something… I get the feeling the filmmakers struggled to justify why all this was happening. It's supposed to be about virtual reality, and yet they have to inject Jobe with mind enhancing drugs. So what's doing the trick? Is it the drugs, or is it the virtual reality? What military application does this have?

Forget it. It's a special effects movie. The whole thing is an excuse to showcase that newfangled computer animation stuff, and for the time, it looked incredible. These days video games have better visuals, but once upon a time, this was the shit!

The movie never feels like something real is going on. Everything looks like a set, the actors all act like they're acting. It's pretty forgettable save for the CGI effects time capsule. For that reason alone this movie needs to be preserved. Our children must be educated about where we came from.

But wait! This is allegedly based on a story by Stephen King! King wrote a story about virtual reality invading the real world??

Well, apparently not. Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man begins with a man named Harold who has let his lawn grow a little too long. So he hires someone to cut it for him. After a few beers and trying to understand the Wall Street Journal, he looks at the fat man who is cutting his lawn. Not only does he have a monster of a lawnmower, but the man himself is crawling behind the mower, naked, eating the grass clippings. The man seems to have cloven feet, and he says he works for Pan.

Harold calls the police to report indecency. That's when the lawnmower man releases his mower on Harold through his house. Since this is a Stephen King story, you can guess how it ends.

No wonder King sued the filmmakers to take his name off the movie. Maybe the screenwriters started off turning this story into a movie, but they did not finish with it. The only part of the movie that resembles King's story is when Jobe telepathically sends his own lawnmower into a neighbor's house and grinds up his friend's abusive father. It's pretty lame and out of place, but now I see where it came from.

I gotta wonder how they went from this story to the movie's concept. Don't think there's enough material to make King's Lawnmower Man into a feature film, and the movie we got didn't fare too much better in the plot department, but man, the special effects are a joy to behold. I guess I'm a sucker for those early 90's CG effects.

Friday, March 7, 2014

In early 1900's England, Mr. and Mrs. Banks endure a most difficult circumstance: their nanny has quit, and now there is nobody to tend to the four children (because in polite British society, it is socially unacceptable for the parents to have any part in raising their own children). But the wind brings a new nanny, Mary Poppins.

The book is episodic, with each chapter telling an adventure that happens when Mary Poppins is around. The first adventure concerns her day off, without the children. She meets Burt, the man who sells matches on the street corner when it rains, and makes chalk drawings when it doesn't. He wants to take her out to tea, but doesn't have enough money, so Burt takes Mary Poppins into one of his chalk drawings, where they are served tea and don't have to worry about money. Burt and Mary go way back, but we're not told anything else.

In another adventure, Michael finds a compass, and Mary Poppins uses it to take them on a brief trip to all four corners of the world. They speak to a Panda in the East, a dolphin in the west, and so forth. Everyone knows and respects Mary, even the animals, and Jane and Michael ask how it's possible, but Mary never tells.

Another adventure is about the baby twins, John and Barbara. Mary Poppins can speak to the animals and understand what babies say. She sternly tells the twins that someday they will forget how to understand the wind and the starling. Everyone does, except Mary herself. This is the only hint we get as to who Mary Poppins is. This adventure is actually a little heartbreaking. I think every adult has a sense that they lost something when they grew up, though no one can quite put it in words.

My favorite adventure takes place on Mary Poppins' birthday. They take a trip to the zoo, and on this day, the animals are free and the people are in the cages, yet they don't seem to know it. For some reason, the king of the animals has a great deal of respect for Mary, treating her like a royal guest on her birthday. Why? She'll never tell.

Everybody in England must have been no fun back then. One of my favorite exchanges is at the end, when Mr. Banks has lost his black bag, and finds it in the study when it should have been by the umbrella stand. He asks whoever would have left it there.

Mrs. Banks replies: "You did, my dear, you when took the Income Tax papers out of it last night."

Mr. Banks gave her such a hurt look that she wished she been less tactless and had said she had put it there herself.

Because in polite English society, one does not actually say anything to anyone. Why, the very idea of stating the truth so directly, especially a wife to her husband! The very idea!

Did people really talk like this, or is this storybook dialogue, or parody of British politeness? I fear I shall never know.

Mary is always stern, vain and apparently no nonsense, but she can make anything happen and when she's around everything seems to be better. There is no story going on to tie the chapters together. It's simply the wonderful and amazing things that happen to Jane, Michael and the babies while under Mary Poppins' care. The episodes are imaginative and fun, and Mary herself is a complete mystery. A nanny who is wonderful and amazing, even if she is closed and stern.

I watched the movie a while ago and I'm happy to announce I enjoyed the book, too. The book gave the filmmakers an awful lot of material to work with.

The big change was the filmmakers added a story to tie these adventures together. Something about Mr. Banks doesn't like all this whimsy Mary Poppins is allowing his children to experience and instead wants them raised to be serious, productive members of British society. Yeah, it's pretty weak, but it tries, and I suppose for a movie, something had to hold everything together.

This is not done in the book at all. Mr. and Mrs. Banks are barely in the story. No Votes for Women, no big commotion at the bank, even Burt is only seen in one chapter. The book is all about the adventures that happen to the children while Mary Poppins is around, and it doesn't need anything else.

I always thought the movie's attempt at a story arc was weak at best, but it hardly matters because Julie Andrews nails the role so perfectly. She looks the part, she talks the part, and she acts the part exactly as Travers wrote in her book. She is definitely less stern in the movie. In the book, one wonders how anyone can like this woman. She's arrogant, vain, closed, no fun. Every time the children express even the slightest sense of adventure or imagination, Mary is first to say don't be foolish, now come along.

In spite of that, she still manages to be likable. It's the mystery of her character. The way the animals treat her, the way other people treat her--like a queen returned for a visit after a long absence. Everyone seems to know her, and you can't help but be drawn into their reverence.

The film keeps the spirit of the book in tact, although it minimizes Mary's sternness and focuses on the adventure. This makes the Mary Poppins in the movie seem like some magical creature visiting the Earth, while the Mary in the book is more like a real person who has some extraordinary knowledge she refuses to share.

Every day with Mary is a day full of wonder and adventure. In the book, Mary is with the children for nearly a year, which emphasizes that her job is to care for the children. She'll be out on an errand with the children, and just like that an adventure begins. Adventures happen out of ordinary, everyday life with the nanny, whereas the movie is about these adventures replacing everyday life. It's not what Travers intended, but it does work on its own.

I like both. The movie is a fun spectacle, and the book is about adventure coming out of everyday life. Check it out sometime.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

New short story is published, and the issue is released. Fictionvale volume 2. My story is Beneath a Sponsored Sky. Though the issue theme is "space western" my story is not a space western, rather general science fiction.

The old man sat on a chair on his back porch, rocking back and forth, staring at the grass. He would have liked to look at the stars, but there were none to see. He refused to look at the animated images and logos in the sky. Decades ago, he convinced himself that turning his head to the ground was an act of rebellion, like the mute button on the TV once was.

So the old man watched the plain, motionless grass while above him, behind the sparse clouds, animated cartoon characters danced, company logos flashed and rotated and flipped, dramatic text scrolled and zoomed in and out. Five hundred individual regions in this hemisphere, each displaying its own animation against a black background that simulated the night sky of old. Some sequences were as long as five minutes, others as short as a couple seconds, looping again and again and again from sundown to sunup.

As a boy, the old man clearly remembered sitting on the porch with his father under a cloudless night sky and the land would be pale white under the moonlight. The Earth was no longer illuminated by the moon at night. Now the trees and grass glowed faintly red from the light of a corporate logo above. The old man sighed, as he did every night that he pondered it.

Movement out the corner of his eye caught his attention.

...

It's been a long time coming and I really like how this story turned out. Check it out on Fictionvale's official site!

Monday, March 3, 2014

I called the third party agency my job recommended to sign up for new insurance. At first I was frustrated that I waited all this time to call this third party when all she's gonna do is hold my hand while I move through the Healthcare.gov website. I almost hung up on her and just did it myself. Almost.

Glad I didn't, for the website wouldn't let me past the identity verification part. My appointment was on a weekend and the website still gets bogged down on weekends. Thanks to Ohio for not setting up its own exchange. So she did a three-way call with their helpdesk, and they answered some questions for me. Two different agents at the same time, but I got through. My application is processing right now.

This Blue Cross plan would cost $291 a month without my income-based subsidy. With the subsidy, it costs $73 a month. Total deductible is $1,150, and then the plan pays 90% of just about everything after that.

It's better than what [retail] offers, which has a $2,500 deductible and 80/20 coverage after that. What made [retail]'s plan seem cheaper is the HRA dollars [retail] contributed every year, which was usually about 500 dollars, and they carried over from year to year if unused. All medical costs were deducted from those dollars up front until they ran out, which applied to the deductible, after which I had to pay the rest. It gave the illusion of cheap health coverage because for a while I paid nothing out of pocket with all the HRA dollars I had saved up over the years.

Overall, it is better, and more affordable. This plan offers better rates, though without the HRA dollars, I still have higher up front costs. (This is also why [retail] is actively reducing the number of covered employees, like me. The less money [retail] has to contribute to those HRA plans, the more profit for shareholders.) I don't like that it comes with more up front costs, but really [retail]'s insurance was no better--it was only the HRA account that made it seem better.

Now the catch is that if in the future I get more hours and do qualify for [retail]'s healthcare plan again (and if it costs less than 9.5% of my annual income), I must sign up for my employer's plan, or lose the subsidy that reduces my monthly premium. This is regardless of how much money I actually make.

Furthermore, that subsidy depends on my income for this year, so if I make more money than anticipated, I could end up owing more federal income tax next year. On the other hand, if I took less than I qualified to receive, I'll get a bigger return, so it works both ways. I have the option to adjust my subsidy credit any time during the year, either through healthcare.gov, or by calling, to prevent a tax shock next year.

I don't like that I had to do this at all... I mean, what if a book succeeds and I end up making quite a bit of money? I don't want to be hit with a penalty for unexpected success.

I don't like the idea of possibly having to bounce back and forth between different insurance plans as my hours fluctuate, or getting hit with a tax surprise next year if I unexpectedly make more money than I anticipated this tax year. I don't think we should be penalized for turning down our employer's insurance plan if the one we get on the marketplace is better.

Wouldn't it be better to stay on the same policy than have to jump back and forth between my employer's plan and one on the marketplace as I qualify? It doesn't seem like a good thing for the insurance market if people have to keep switching or else lose the subsidy.

(I don't think [retail] will ever let me work enough to qualify for their benefits again. I'm betting on that.)

This is certainly not perfect. What if I get a job that pays more? Or a job that pays less, but offers health insurance that isn't as good as the one I signed up for on my own? Why should I have to switch insurance plans if I like the one I got on the marketplace? The longer you're on a plan, the better, and just because I'm employed full-time doesn't mean my employer's plan is worth taking, or I can now afford the marketplace insurance plan without the subsidy. Shouldn't eligibility for the subsidy be based on income alone, and not on whether your employer offers a plan? I think our insurance should be independent of our job. I really do. The ACA could have made that easier.

According to the website (http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/), if my employer's plan requires me to pay more than 9.5% of my income, I can still sign up for a plan on the exchange and receive a subsidy. I'll cross that bridge if I ever come to it.

I suppose the ACA will do until America gets with the rest of the world and cuts out the complications. The copays and deductibles and coverage traps and gaps and tax credits and qualifications. I yearn for that day when corporations do not control everything, healthcare among them, and America switches to a national plan. It's refreshing that the government is giving subsidies to the people for once, and not to the corporations, but I'd rather not be forced to take my employer's insurance plan. What is the point of that?

All things considered, this is better than the alternative. Before the ACA, an insurance company would turn you down for any reason. People wanted insurance, but these companies denied service if you were so much as prescribed depression medication in the past. This is a health plan I would never have been able to afford otherwise, it's better than [retail]'s current coverage, and I have Obama to thank for it.

Healthcare is still ridiculously expensive, but now it's within reach. I hope for these finer points to be adjusted soon. In the distant future, I hope a national plan comes along to replace it, but the ACA is still rolling out for now. It hasn't "failed" yet. I'm willing to give it a chance.